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User blog:Capi3101/WCRPG Update for October 13, 2014
Greetings, Wingnuts and Citizens! Time for the Weekly WCRPG Update. This was a rough week for WCRPG as a whole, and not just because I lost more than a full third of my working breaks owing to events in real life. On Thursday, I received a notice from Lulu (the company that has been handling the production of hardcopies of the game) saying that they were going to discontinue all of my products due to "violation of the Lulu Membership Agreement", which among other things "states that your Content cannot contain material that is intellectual property of another". I can appeal that if I'd like, but I don't think my chances of success are very good. For Starflight, I had the written permission of Rod McConnell prior to production and he holds the Starflight IP, so I might be able to get it back up at least. But as has been pointed out ad nauseum on the CIC and RSI forums, the holder of the Wing Commander IP is Electronic Arts. I'm considering my options at this point; I'm thinking about asking the CIC admins if they wouldn't mind hosting the PDFs for the campaigns, which at least would keep the PDFs open as an option; they already host the PDF of the Core Rules. Barring that, I could set up a private Dropbox for the campaign PDFs. As for the hardcopies though, I have to report that as of last Thursday they are no longer available through Lulu.com; if you wanted to get hardcopies, I certainly hope you got them - they are now unavailable for an indefinite period. Sorry to kick this week's update off with bad news, y'all, but the whole thing has been weighing heavily on my mind these last few days. So, bad news done. This week otherwise pretty much went like things have gone these last two months in spite of loss of work time. Stats for the Aurora-class were generated and posted to the wiki by Monday afternoon, after which I started in on work on the Mastermind character. I had some problems getting started in on his early history and ultimately I decided to seed it heavily with references from Tom Clancy's classic novel, The Hunt for Red October (one my all time favorites - and no doubt the origin of the character's surname anyways, so it seemed appropriate). Mastermind was completed by midday on Tuesday. I then turned my attention back to the lak B'yaga family, specifically the character of Mo. As y'all might recall from previous updates, she was nearly complete already. I ended Tuesday with some work left to complete on the character. Wednesday I had a workshop to attend with my workplace; the first two hours of the workshop were spent going over materials skipped from the day before - things that were completely irrelevant to my work - so I spent the time editing Mo's history and had it wrapped up by the time I had to switch my attention back to what was going on; I posted her completed history late that afternoon. Later that same evening I was able to use Mo's history to work out the missing bits of Ku'a K'le's history and had it ready to go by the end of the day. I had built Ku'a K'le's complete history offline; I posted it to his character's profile first thing Thursday morning. With those two complete, it was a pretty simple matter to work out the history of their son Qith'rakoth and had his history completed by midday on Thursday. So that's three Elegy characters completed this week. I finished out the week working on the history of another character, Le'a'he. He's intended to be the storyteller of the group and I didn't have as thorough of a set of notes about him as I thought I had, so I was only able to get him to the point where I could start in on his life events. I've given that character an interesting angle - he's been masquerading as a commoner when he's actually utak (a socially outcast class), and I'm beginning to think there's an angle I could work there for a possible adventure. The Plan for this week - build stats for the Defiance-class and the Saga character of Venom (who I'm looking forward to building - I haven't done too many GEs up to this point), and then head back into Elegy characters. I also need to make whatever arrangements are going to be necessary to keep everything available to y'all and try to get SFRPG back up at least. I should also mention that I've been contacted by CIC member Aginor and will be resuming editing work on his up and coming Kilrathi campaign beginning this week. So there's a lot going on right now; hopefully I've got time to handle it all. That's it for this week; next update between between 11-14Z on October 20th. Here's Mastermind's profile: Mastermind Johann Ramius was the son of Marko Ramius, a clothing manufacturer specializing in military uniforms for the Confederation Navy, and Natalia Ramius, a librarian by trade who had a particular liking for late-19th and early-20th Century literature, in particular the works of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and Upton Sinclair - and who made sure her only child was familiarized with those works as well. He was born in the community of Utena in Lithuania and grew up in a home located within a few minutes walk of Dauniškis Park, frequently spending time there during his formative years. The war began when Ramius was four years old and during his childhood he often heard stories of Kilrathi aggression; the first major events of the War that he could recall clearly from his memory later in his life were the Hellespont Massacre and the Enyo Engagement. When Johann was fourteen, a dear friend of his father, TCSF Captain Ivan Putin, was killed in action during a Confederation offensive in Epsilon Sector. Johann had often heard his father and "Uncle Ivan" get into debates over several broad topics during his childhood - mainly on the topic of political science - and his death left his father in a severely depressed state. When Johann was sixteen, Naval Supply decided to switch their uniform suppliers off-world, which killed most of his father's business; the family became strapped for cash, and notably it limited Johann's choices for venues of higher education. Rather than attend college right away, Johann made the decision to donate what funds he had saved up to that point to his parents and chose to enlist in the Confederation Space Force as soon as he turned eighteen over the vehement objection of his parents. During basic training, he showed proficiency in artillery marksmanship and was subsequently assigned to TCS Exeter as a turret gunner. When Exeter received a squadron of first-generation Broadsword torpedo bombers, he was selected from among the ship's existing company to accompany varying flights in the same capacity. He received high praise for his work during torpedo bombing missions while still serving with Exeter and it was one of the ship's Pilot-In-Commands that recommended him for an officer's commission. Ramius received the news one day that he had been accepted to the Space Force Academy; he left at the start of the next semester and graduated in 2656 with a Second Lieutenant's commission. He attended flight training upon graduation, where he demonstrated a great deal of aptitude in the art of ground support and anti-capital ship strikes. This, coupled with his prior experience as a gunner, got him tracked into bombers; his next combat assignment was TCS Confederation, where he was assigned as a torpedo bomber pilot. He started off as a co-pilot flying a A-17D Broadsword, later earning his qualification as Pilot-in-Command. His seemingly psychic ability to strategize and coordinate several craft conducting their individual bombing runs - which almost always resulted in the target’s destruction at the exact pre-planned Time-on-Target under his supervision - earned him the callsign "Mastermind". He was later promoted to the grade of Captain and was transferred to TCS Concordia, where he continued to fly Broadswords under the command of ship's CAG Colonel Devereaux. Aboard Concordia he became a veteran of the Enigma Campaign, Operation Back Lash and the Battle of Munro. He also led several alpha strikes against numerous Kilrathi battle groups and task forces during his time with Concordia, which helped stave off numerous attacks against Confederation colony worlds. His last actions with Concordia were the Battle of Sirius and the Battle of Earth; his was one the very few Broadsword crews to survive the Battle of Sirius, as Confederation torpedo bombers were among the most targeted craft by Kilrathi forces during that campaign. After the Battle of Earth, he was promoted to the grade of Major, received transitional training to the new F/A-76A Longbow and was reassigned to one of the very first operational Longbow squadrons as squadron XO, serving aboard TCS Hermes. He remained aboard Hermes during the final year of the war. Ramius remained in the military after the War's end. During the Black Lance Affair, he defected to the Border Worlds and remained with the UBW afterwards to serve an exchange tour with the Outerlands Naval Reserve. Upon conclusion of that tour, he was reassigned to R&D and had an active hand in the development of next generation bomber craft like the TB-80 Devestator and the TB-81 Shrike. Major Ramius is one of the most experienced bomber pilots in the Hermes Air Wing. He is nothing short of a genius when it comes to planning capship attacks and executing bombing tactics, and has the necessary dogfighting skills to hold his own if needed. Personality-wise, Mastermind refuses to acknowledge the glamour and hotshot flashiness normally associated with fighter jocks, and is proud to call himself a bomber pilot to the core. In his words, "Fighter pilots make holo-movies and video games, bomber pilots make history." Category:Blog posts